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Waiting for Godot / En Attendant Godot
By Samuel Beckett
Faber and Faber £16.99
192 pages
Dateline: 25th September, 2006
2006 is a very special double anniversary year for Samuel Beckett's
most famous play.
Not only does it represent the centenary of the Irish Nobel laureate
and former first-class cricketer's birth but it is also the Golden Jubilee
of the first British publication of Waiting for Godot.
To commemorate the anniversaries, the original publishers Faber and
Faber have brought out the first ever version of the play printed simultaneously
in both French and English on alternate pages, French on the left with
the even numbers.
Academics and students have been waiting a couple of generations for
something of this kind and are likely to snap up the edition like hot
cakes.
There are subtle differences between the two versions both of which
were written by the playwright, the French first. For the most part
though, it is reassuring to see how similar they are.
For a great lover of language and the inheritor of Joyce's mantle,
sound can be almost as important as meaning and it can be instructive,
to switch across the page on occasion and read the other language.
This is also a great opportunity to remind oneself what a tremendous
play this is and also the way in which it changed the nature of theatre
overnight.
Waiting for Godot is the great existentialist drama whose meaning
is in its meaninglessness. The main characters, Vladimir and Estragon
are, on one level, hopeless tramps and, on another, arguably deep thinkers
in search of the meaning of life and the existence of a divine being.
The two characters who run across them, Pozzo and Lucky say so much
about the inhumanity of man, seen at its very worst in a World War only
a few years before the play was written.
In sum, this is an amazing play in which every word counts and the
new simultaneous translation provides a good opportunity to read the
text, perhaps before going to visit a centenary production such as that
by the play's first director, Sir Peter Hall, , as this review is being
written, has just announced a London transfer.
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